I aim to live my life with the attitude -- “If not me to bring forth the qualities that I wish to see in the world then who?”—If I want to see honesty or bravery or leadership or compassion, I pray that I don’t wait for someone else to exemplify these qualities.
Pratyahara is situated directly in the middle of the eight limbs, its central position indicates that it is the point where the outer can become inner (and also the reverse).
In weak moments I reason that I can’t do more or that yoga doesn’t have answers or the little practice that I do each day doesn’t adequately speak to or address what is happening right now with things seeming to be spinning out of control on every fault line across the entire spectrum of existence.
The yogi wants to drop all ideas and know reality from a place of no thought, direct experience without language or concept. The ordinary woman cherishes ideas above all else. Spends the first one third of her life in school, studying ideas, and then she goes to work generating and selling ideas.
If yoga is to take its proper place as an main, effective agent for positive change in the world it is because of the philosophy that it is based on—not as much because of the power of doing the physical postures.
Abhyasa is a Sanskrit word that is defined as the effort to remain steady in a state of yoga (citta vrtti nirodha) and thus be able to see beyond the visible, material world to the sacred...
Even though most of us begin yoga without giving much or any thought to the yamas eventually we open the door to contemplating and even putting them into action.
I continue to want to research the postures because I have a hunger to explore the states of awareness that become available to me when I am practicing. The time that I spend in a yoga posture is a time of communion where I feel awake and in tune with ever
To practice Isvara pranidhana is to endeavor to live your life from the perspective that everything under the sun shares a benevolent, invisible, cohesive, inescapable connection with everything else.
